Skip to main content

Posts

DJ TO STRANGLER: PATRICIA FURLONG MURDER - Radio Espial EP46

Patricia Furlong (21) from Dundrum, Dublin spent the night of Friday, July 23rd, 1982 with friends at her local pub, the Nine Arches. Just before midnight, some of the group of friends decided to head to the late night Fraughan Festival held at Johnnie Fox’s pub, Glencullen, in the Dublin Mountains. In the early hours of the morning she was witnessed leaving the venue to go on a walk with a man described as dressed in an ‘all-white-suit’. Patricia never returned to her friends at the venue. Around 8 am on Saturday July 24th, two teenage girls out for a morning walk discovered Patricia’s dishevelled body lying in a field. She was dead following a brutal strangulation with her own upper clothing. Within weeks, a man emerged as a prime suspect, but it would be many years later before he was finally charged with the murder of Patricia Furlong. Nothing proved straightforward in this case… a case 42 years later that still remains unresolved. It will be a lesson to police, families and the g

CASE UPDATES: ANNIE McCARRICK | TINA SATCHWELL | BRIAN KINSELLA | EMER O'LOUGHLIN - Radio Espial E45

In this episode of Radio Espial, we have news and updates on three murder cases and one missing person case in Ireland. This episode was recorded on March 28th, 2024. The cases Ciaran and I cover are: Annie McCarrick Tina Satchwell Emer O'Loughlin Brian Kinsella  

EVA BRENNAN COLD CASE - Radio Espial EP44

Eva Brennan, 39, of Rathgar, County Dublin, went missing on Sunday, 25th July 1993 after leaving her parents’ home in Terenure, South Dublin and walking the 15-18 minute distance back to her apartment at Madison House on Rathgar Road. Her missing person cold case is often included in Ireland's so-called Vanishing Triangle of women who went missing on the East coast of Ireland from the early to late 1990s. Eva was formally reported missing to An Garda Siochana on Tuesday, July 27th by her father Davy Brennan when relatives had not heard from her since the recent Sunday afternoon. While it is believed Eva did return to her apartment on the Sunday afternoon, because the jacket she was wearing to her parents’ house was later found in her apartment, no witness sighting or CCTV footage recorded her on the journey home. A delayed missing person inquiry was opened in the first week of her disappearance, thorough and forensic searches (of land and water) for Eva in the locales of Rathgar

MISSING: Brian Kinsella Case - Radio Espial EP43

Brian Kinsella went missing from his family home in Gracedieu Heights in Waterford, Ireland on the 17th November 2021 He told his parents that he was heading to a phone shop to have his new device looked at after having problems with it. This was just after 9 am. He was due in work at 12 pm at Musgrave’s Cash & Carry where he worked for his daily shift. He never turned up for work and soon it was established that he also never visited the phone shop in Waterford. He was last seen on CCTV near Grattan Quay in the town at 10.10am that morning. No trace of him or the reasons behind his disappearance were ever discovered. He was reported missing on the day of his disappearance at 7 pm. An extensive local, land and sea search began soon afterwards lasting many weeks and months right into February 2022. His case soon captured local and national media attention in Ireland due to the efforts of his family and friends. To this day, in 2024, substantive leads have never emerged. Subsequen

MISSING: THE MURDER OF FIONA SINNOTT - Radio Espial EP42

At the time of her disappearance Fiona Sinnott was living in the rural village of Ballyhitt, Broadway, County Wexford, Ireland, some 120 kilometres south of Dublin City. Fiona was a young single mother, and her daughter Emma was eleven months old at the time of her mother’s disappearance. 19 year old Fiona Sinnott spent the night of Sunday February the 8th 1998 socialising with a group a friends in Butler’s Pub in Broadway Co. Wexford not far from her rented home. Fiona’s friends described Fiona as being happy that night, and in good spirits. However, her friends would later tell Gardai that Fiona was also complaining of pain in one of her arms. Fiona had been the victim of domestic violence in the past and the report of pain in her arm raised the suspicions of Gardai when examining the case. Also in Butler’s Pub that Sunday night was Fiona’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, he did not join Fiona and her friends and spent the night drinking at the bar alone. At roughly midnigh

MISSING: CIARA BREEN MURDER COLD CASE - Radio Espial EP41

Ciara Breen, 17, from Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland went missing on 13th February 1997, on Bachelor’s Walk where she lived with her mother in a small terrace house. She was last seen by her mother Bernadette, who said at the time that they had both gone to bed just after midnight. That day they had gone to a local cafĂ© for evening dinner then returned home. According to Bernadette, she was due to get the results of a biopsy the following morning from Blackrock Clinic and Ciara was worried about this. The two had a short conversation on Bernadette’s bed before both going to sleep just after midnight. After 2 am, Bernadette got up to go to the bathroom and discovered Ciara was not in her room, nor her own bedroom. It was not the first time Ciara had snuck out during the night. She had left a window on the latch on the bottom storey of the house and it is believed she did so, so that she could climb back in. It is considered the most likely scenario in Ciara's case that she decided

IRELAND'S PANDORA'S BOX: Mother & Baby Homes Scandal - Ireland

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary's Mother and Baby Home) operated between 1925 and 1961 in the town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children and run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns, that also operated the Grove Hospital in Tuam. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to there to give birth and interned for a year doing unpaid work. In 2012, the Health Service Executive (HSE) raised concerns that up to 1,000 children from the Home might have been sent to the United States for the purpose of illegal adoptions, without their mothers' consent. Subsequent research discovered files relating to a lower number of 36 illegal foreign adoptions from the home and concluded that allegations of foreign adoptions for money were "impossible to prove and impossible to disprove". Local historian Catherine Corless published an article documenting the history of the home in 2012